FLC: Kathmandu, Nepal

At the end of last month, Phillip went to Kathmandu, Nepal for a Fall Leadership Conference. He would like to share some of the things he experienced with you.

About four weeks ago I was in Kathmandu for a four day conference. The location of the hotel that hosted the conference was great because it was a little more than a 5 minute walk to one of the largest Buddhist Stupas in the city. Stupas are Buddhist holy sites, some have ashes of monks in them. Every walkway in and around the Stupa is circular. You are suppose to walk clockwise around the Stupa for good karma. This is what it looked like entering the open square the Stupa is in the middle of.

 All four sides of the Stupa also have the eyes of Buddha. One evening I ate at a Himalayan vegetarian restaurant overlooking the Stupa. Several people were meditating and moving up and down similar to a "burpee"  workout move without the jump, looking like they were working themselves into a trance.

 When you are working around the Stupa there are cylinder wooden prayer wheels. As you are walking around the Stupa people say prayers and turn the wheels in the clockwise direction as well to help have their prayers answered.

Being only a five minute walk away I often went to this Stupa for sightseeing, meals, and souvenir shopping. Sometimes we had an hour and half off for lunch so we would often time walk to the square. Apparently the history of this Stupa says that it was the end of an ancient Tibetan trading route leading into the Northeast corner of Kathmandu. 

On Saturday evening the conference organization bussed everyone to an Ancient Nepalese capital and is an World Heritage site today called Bhaktapur. At Bhaktapur, like the rest of the conference, I enjoyed talking to different Principals from different schools. We ended up walking through these small streets and were escorted by a drum section from the local community.

The conference paid for a tradition show with the locals. This was set up just for us. It was local people presenting their culture for us, and the money that was donated for the performance was put back into the local charities. At some point I felt that I was at a Hawaiian Luau, but I enjoyed seeing the culture and the differences between seven different Buddhist dances

Overall I enjoyed the conference and felt like I grew professionally. I was one of the youngest people there with many Head Directors of Schools, Principals, curriculum coordinators and board members. I embraced it and I tried my best to network for future opportunities. I really enjoyed Nepal and found out that it was has an outdoor tourist industry that goes beyond just hiking Mt. Everest. I would like to go back there and am glad I got to go this year. If I'm able go to the Fall Leadership Conference next year it will be in Istanbul, Turkey.